Mohamed Fadl was one of the panelists during a panel about video, free-to-play games, and eSports at Casual Connect Europe. “The community itself drives us,” he says.
Mohamed Fadl is eSports Director of Wargaming America and Europe. Wargaming is an award-winning online game developer and publisher; one of the leaders in the free-to-play MMO market. Mohamed began his career with the company as Director of Community, leading a thirty-four member community team which supports seven languages. Before coming to Wargaming, he gained valuable knowledge managing virtual communities in other companies. That experience helps him on a daily basis in his present responsibilities, especially as it allowed him to meet core players.
It is All About the Players
Mohamed believes the biggest challenge facing the game industry today is losing focus on why we do what we do. He insists, “It’s about you and me, the players.” He believes the players invest the most important thing they have, their time, and they will never get back any of the time they invest. “So we should focus on the responsibility of making it a unique experience tailored to the players we want to reach, instead of trying to make games for everyone as long as the money is right.”
He emphasizes that every decision should be made keeping in mind that the players give their time for the game, and that is something they can never get back. But he admits, “Listening to the community is not always useful; a very small percentage of the community is vocal about what they want.”
For Mohamed, the most enjoyable part of working in the game industry is meeting the hard-core players of the games you work on. And the proudest moment of his career came when he helped to donate one hundred thousand euros to Warchild with Wargaming.
Gaming and Exploring
Mohamed spends his free time exploring the north of Finland and traveling with his wife and child. Any other available time he spends gaming. He prefers to use a PC, and games he enjoys include World of Warcraft—multi-boxing (one of his favorite hobbies is multi-boxing), World of WarPlanes because he has loved to play flight simulators from childhood, and League of Legends, where he finds the social aspect of the game quite interesting. Mohamed owns an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One, but mostly because they have soft launched World of Tanks 360 Edition.
